Measure Your Impact at Work (Then Tell Someone)

Today’s business world is very focused on results; deadlines, budgets, outcomes, efficiency, productivity, etc.  Performance is measured in results, with the accompanying metrics that let you know how effectively you arrived at your results in your role.  We even put our results on our resumes in the form of accomplishments, helping others to see our demonstrated knowledge, skills and abilities and how we could make a difference to an organization.
 
But do results tell the whole story of you in your work?
 
No, they do not, for they are too one-dimensional to do that.  Results are really only the beginning.  Results are sexy, there is a lot of thought and hard work that goes into making something happen in the right way, at the right time.  Results get a lot of glory, but in reality they are not the whole story, because most of us don’t get out of bed to chase results, we get out of bed to make a meaningful difference…and that means we need to look beyond results to the impact those results have on ourselves, our organizations, our communities and our families.
 
Results are a product of our actions; impact is a product of our intentions. Most of us find a sense of purpose and meaning in our work because large aspects of it align with our core values.  Our values, in turn, form the quality of our intent in our work.  Being able to articulate your impact at work is far more powerful than just focusing on results.  Learning to demonstrate how your values-based intentions lead to value-driven actions and positive impacts allows your employer to see your worth beyond the binary “did you get it done or didn’t you”.  It gives you an opportunity to demonstrate what you learned along the way, how this work will serve the team/organization/end clients beyond its current result.  In essence, it helps everyone to see how your work makes a meaningful difference to others.
 
So how do you do that?  There is a simple “recipe” for writing an impact statement, something you can use to help your manager, team or organization see how your work has reach beyond just today.    It is RESULT + YOUR VALUES = IMPACT and it looks like this (on a self-review or in an e-mail); “In completing the work on this service offering, integrity, teamwork and innovation ensures that not only will this meet our current company mandate for this client, but we have a ‘blueprint’ that is easily replicable for future offerings that will allow us to consistently exceed customer expectations.”
 
Try it.  Take a recent result you achieved at work, and write it up reflecting the values you used in making it happen and see if the impact of that doesn’t write its self.  We need to own more of who we are in our work, making it visible to others as well as ourselves, celebrating how we make a difference with the 40+ hours we invest every week at work.  Show them what you’re made of, what you’ve got, and how it is moving the organization forward one good intention at a time.